Pope Francis: “Being Homosexual Isn’t a Crime.”

[Baffle]

Well, the Church does not allow new marriages for the infertile.

Getting his holiness to jerk a test sample out of me during the reading of the banns and hoping I remembered my protein shake this morning.

 

[Baffle]

He's waving one of my sperms in the air by the tail and they're going to have a vote on each one after the sermon. It's a long mass. So's the church service.

 

[Absent]

So, catching up with the conversation here.

We're at watching out for infertile people when it comes to "such things as the adoption of children, the employment of teachers, the housing needs of genuine families, landlords' legitimate concerns in screening potential tenants" ?

 

[Dalisclock]

He's waving one of my sperms in the air by the tail and they're going to have a vote on each one after the sermon. It's a long mass. So's the church service.

@Baffle, YOU MONSTER!


Still more serious then Tstorm.

 

[Absent]

@Baffle, YOU MONSTER!


Still more serious then Tstorm.

Yeah, was thinking about that. The discussion had reached pythonnesque levels.

But to be fair, that's the thing with religion. It doesn't mix well with rationality, so pushing the logic of its dogmas is doomed to get transparently silly pretty fast. To the point where it's almost unfair to start rational arguments about it. There's a reason why it values blind faith and "mysteries" so much, and regularly warns about overthinking.

And that's not a bad thing. Precisely because its logic, followed to an extreme, becomes dangerously absurd. Religious extremists and fundamentalists aren't "irrational" as much as "hyper-rational", facing the logical consequences of their premises (lives, laws, society, don't matter in front of eternal life, salvation, and the absolute authority of an omniscient god). Most humans have moral failsafes, some sort of common sense or conscience warning, that prevent them to go down that rabbit hole, and it takes the form of ordinary everyday self-contradictions, compromises or simply... stuff pushed aside. Just like conspiracy nuts avoid anything that contradict their pre-chosen conclusion, most believers avoid what (in their own religion) would lead to antisocial, violent behaviors. They also work upstream from their conclusion, but their conclusion is "I will not harm people, and if religion seems to push me to, then something is wrong with its interpretation". That's the fortunate opposite to rigorously following its implications, mortal decency be damned. Which fundamentalists do. So let's praise the flexibility of the human mind, and its indifference to contradictions. It's what saves mankind more often than we'd think.

Because coherence can lead to unpredictable results. Cornered by a "Why don't you kill me then, if you believe this", people are more likely to just kill you than to ditch their too invested premises. Better allow the way out offered by self-contradiction and "not thinking too much about it".

 

[tstorm823]

You know what i meant. Ratzinger opined that my wish to have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone of the same sex was an intrinsic moral evil. Now address that, at long bloody last, will you?

I have addressed it, but cannot address that in any way you'll find satisfactory. I'm trying to explain a different philosophical paradigm, and you are demanding an answer that fits within your own, and no attempt to do so would ever convey the truth. You can only understand my perspective by meeting me on my terms. If you are unwilling to do so, you are doomed to ignorance, and this entire exercise was a waste of time.

Which is functionally identical to stating that gay people or infertile people or those past menopause can avoid the ire of the Catholic Church if they live lives of celibacy and a refusal to enter romantic relationships.

It's not ire, it's about purpose.

I didn't know that; another reason to consider it grossly discriminatory.

That's a nice little Catch22 you've constructed.

So you're pro-discrimination against queer people for living their truth.

There is no "their truth". There is the truth. If you insist on separating your existence from universal truth, that is essentially what sin is.

 

[tstorm823]

But to be fair, that's the thing with religion. It doesn't mix well with rationality.

Nearly all of intellectual history is dominated by the deeply religious. Your ideas are exactly the kind of stupidity that spawned flat-earthers, young-earth creationists, anti-vaxxers, etc. The conflict thesis is pure garbage.

 

[Absent]

Nearly all of intellectual history is dominated by the deeply religious. Your ideas are exactly the kind of stupidity that spawned flat-earthers, young-earth creationists, anti-vaxxers, etc. The conflict thesis is pure garbage.

...he says, during his gender studies autodafe.

 

[Buyetyen]

There is no "their truth". There is the truth. If you insist on separating your existence from universal truth, that is essentially what sin is.

 

[tstorm823]

...he says, during his gender studies autodafe.

I just want you to understand, there is no conflict between faith and reason, and every person who has ever tried to pick a side between the two, regardless of which side, has been an complete douchebag.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think it makes the position rather clear if instead of marriage it was the Eucharist. If the government started a program where they handed out bread to people and called it "the Eucharist", the Catholic Church would be a little miffed. Not because the government handing out bread is a problem, but because of the whole stepping on and trivializing the sacraments part.

What an absolutely boneheaded comparison.

The Catholic church didn't invent marriage and doesn't have any right to use that term over any other institution that uses it. Marriage has been around in a huge amount of cultures for thousands of years prior to the founding of the Catholic church, in both a religious and non-religious capacity.

The government isn't taking anything from the Catholic church by using the word "marriage" as it's not a word that belongs to Catholics or the religious in the first place. If the church believes that trivializes their sacrament then sucks to be you. Maybe you shouldn't have based your sacrament on something that everyone else invented first. It was Catholicism's choice to shove their nose into marriage and we can all freely tell them to butt the fuck out of it.

The Catholic Church in a nutshell:

 

[Absent]

I just want you to understand, there is no conflict between faith and reason, and every person who has ever tried to pick a side between the two, regardless of which side, has been an complete douchebag.

But you illustrate the opposite here. It is not a general rule. As I said, a lot of people who believe in gods have and had a sufficiently open and curious mind to take objective reality (and our increasing understanding of it) in account, to accept it and adapt to it. Even during times where atheism was barely thinkable (and even less possible to express). But also, they have always been facing fundamentalists, denying any new data that contradicted their scriptures, their selected interpretations of them, and the discourses of the religious currents and authorities they referred to. And you belong to this latter category. You are not amonst the believers that made science progress beyond "the world is flat and was created 4000 years ago in seven days". You happen to accept today things that churches took centuries to recognize, but appropriating these now is like current conservatives taking as granted the importance of women's vote and aboloshed slavery, while forgetting that those were earned through fights against their current, and that they are currently resisting the same sort of evolutions that their descendants will, in turn, take for granted and obvious. That is one thing that history keeps repeating.

Your attitude towards gender is exactly the same as the attitude of those who couldn't accept heliocentric models, you have nothing to do with those who managed to establish it regardless of their faith. But you are neither "the believers" nor "the catholics". You don't represent them. You belong to a retrograde portion of them, while a lot of people manage to believe in god without being homophobic, and without being as ignorant as you on everything pertaining to love. Neither the history of progressive, savant believers, nor your religious identity, are an excuse for your current stance. Your only excuse is belonging to a specific, backwards religious subset. We do agree that, for many people, knowledge and religion are not in conflict. But other people.

Don't homogeneise religious attitudes.

(For starters, not that many catholics take popes seriously, fortunately. And even fewer consider them infallible - which would hardly make sense as popes differ from each others.)

 

[Gordon_4]

I really, really hope that we encounter sapient alien life before I die. I really want to see the shift in thinking it’s gonna create so this kind of conversation becomes quaint to the point of non-existent.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Sure! The way modern governments manage marriages is a product of the Protestant Reformation. The state determining what qualifies as a marriage and what that entails was pushed by Protestant sects as an effort to take influence away from the Vatican. The whole setup exists to not let Catholics just do our own thing. I would love to just do our own thing.

Of course, every time I suggest that, I get accused of taking my ball and going home.

Alright so any couple (or group) can declare themselves married and have absolutely equal standing as you and your marriage. Further, you no longer get a tax break, preferential treatment when adopting, or the ability to visit your spouse in the hospital, just like everyone else.

 

[tstorm823]

What an absolutely boneheaded comparison.

The Catholic church didn't invent marriage.

You know the Catholic Church didn't invent eating bread either? You might happen to find looking into history that both the word "marriage" and many of the specific traditions we still follow come from Europe in the Middle Ages. I wonder what religion those things may have come out of...

You are not amonst the believers that made science progress beyond "the world is flat and was created 4000 years ago in seven days".

Your attitude towards gender is exactly the same as the attitude of those who couldn't accept heliocentric models, you have nothing to do with those who managed to establish it regardless of their faith.

The problem with the things you are saying is that it's all based in false histories. We didn't "progress beyond" flat-earth and young earth nonsense, those are new ideas. People have known for millennia that the earth is round. The idea that we didn't know that has been specifically propagated by conflict thesis atheists to paint the religious as stupid.

Myth of the flat Earth - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Young earth creationism is an equally recent myth. Sure, people didn't have a good idea of the age of the earth for a long time, which is perfectly reasonable. Some thought the earth was eternal, some thought it only as old as written history. But the people who developed modern understandings of the age of the earth are people like Robert Hooke, son of a minister and sponsored by a church. Or Nicolas Steno, a Catholic bishop.

Nicolaus Copernicus had a doctorate in Catholic canon. Galileo was directly sponsored by the Vatican. The history you believe in, where scientific knowledge overwrites religion, is entirely fabricated. The Big Bang theory was formulated by a priest. The Jesuit order is all over the place in the history of both geology and astronomy, and Jesuit missions are responsible for spreading the ideas you think the Catholic Church wanted to suppress.

I say again, the conflict thesis is garbage. As dumb as it may sound, the actual timeline is that we knew the earth was old and round and not the center of the universe long before atheists had any prominence, atheists invented fake histories to make the case that religion is opposed to science, and then certain specific sects of people went with the position "ok, if science and religion are incompatible, we just won't believe in science." But that's not a long standing thing, that is the last century, as a consequence of the conflict thesis. The people who believe those things aren't even going backwards, they are inventing new stupidity than any of what previously existed. Like, religion didn't pick the fight here. The Catholic Church never opposed the theory of evolution. Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was an Augustinian friar. It was not "our religion says your science is wrong". The opposite is the case. People like Thomas Huxley, who actively wanted religion removed from the sciences, made evolution into a fight between science and religion. The conflict between religion and science was invented to try to discredit religion. And people like you fell for it.

 

[tstorm823]

Alright so any couple (or group) can declare themselves married and have absolutely equal standing as you and your marriage. Further, you no longer get a tax break, preferential treatment when adopting, or the ability to visit your spouse in the hospital, just like everyone else.

Ok.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Ok.

Alright, so instead we'll have gay marriage and gay couples can get tax breaks, adoptions, and can visit each other in hospitals, and the catholic church can shut up.

 

[Chimpzy]

Ooh, I like this one. That slightly smug, slightly disdainful expression, combined with the ubiquitous accusatory pointing finger. Perfect.

 

[Satinavian]

Alright, so instead we'll have gay marriage and gay couples can get tax breaks, adoptions, and can visit each other in hospitals, and the catholic church can shut up.

That would be not nearly as controversial for most Catholics, including priests and bishops as some might think.

Those who do have issues with this might be called homophobic, just as is true for the rest of the population. And yes, that includes Benedict specifically.




Of course one reason why the church does not do much to champion gay rights has been shown during the family synod :

Most priests share the attitude of the people around them, the culture they are living in. In countries where homosexuals are accepted and already have their rights, priests tend to be rather open to them. In countries where they are strongly discriminated against, priests tend to display open homophobia. In countries where those topics are currently debated, priests tend to be divided.

Just as if "being priest" or "belonging to the church" does not really correlate all that strongly with attitudes towards homosexuality.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

That would be not nearly as controversial for most Catholics, including priests and bishops as some might think.

Those who do have issues with this might be called homophobic, just as is true for the rest of the population. And yes, that includes Benedict specifically.




Of course one reason why the church does not do much to champion gay rights has been shown during the family synod :

Most priests share the attitude of the people around them, the culture they are living in. In countries where homosexuals are accepted and already have their rights, priests tend to be rather open to them. In countries where they are strongly discriminated against, priests tend to display open homophobia. In countries where those topics are currently debated, priests tend to be divided.

Just as if "being priest" or "belonging to the church" does not really correlate all that strongly with attitudes towards homosexuality.

Well of course, but then it renders his argument moot. Not that we didn't know he's a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, but he has to somehow simultaneously agree that being gay is a grievous sin worthy of stripping away rights and not caring about gay people being gay.